Middle Class Fears

So, after living in Panama for a little over two years and having really learned what it means to live within your "means", a possible move back to the United States seems nothing more than a financial nightmare.

Firmly "planted" in middle class ideology--upward mobility, the basic security that I can live a decent life, not living paycheck to paycheck--I came to Panama and learned what it means to live simply. While my salary is somewhat high compared to most Panamanians', it ranks just above the American poverty line. And in Panama, I have been able to continue in the middle class lifestyle the generation that I grew in gifted to my family and that most middle class Americans are now wishing for: I take vacations every year, dont hesitate to go out with friends, roadtrips on long weekends, and still put (a little) money away for savings every month.

You will understand my fear, then, when reading (admittedly, sometime sensationalist) headlines about the cost of living in America, the middle class crunch, and the idea that single family homes now sell for an average half a million dollars , the notion that a small remodel ranges from 15 to 30 THOUSAND dollars (the equivalent of almost two years of my salary), and the fact that in the last twenty years, wealth distrubution inequality has grown from 10 to 25%.

However, like I siad, living in Panama has taught me to live simply, and maybe thats why I have a little confidence for living in the middle class someday. In all the articles I read, American middle class is equated with over the top CONSUMERISM. And I qoute from a video interviewing people struggling with the "middle class crunch": "Our lifestlyes are wonderful, you know, we take nice vacations, we go out to eat alot, you know, do all the normal middle class stuff, you know, shop at whole foods, do the Price Club runs all that." (Like saying "you know" a bazillion times makes us want to identify with her and her all-consuming consumerism: or simply that so many people struggle with this that you really do know!)

It goes back to the fact that when you do buy a house you have to have Raplh Lauren Paint on the walls, Tommy Hilfiger Sheets on your beds, and shelves full of designer clothes in your closet, and plasmas and ipods out the wazoo. Maybe American middle class crunch is exasperated when you have the Joneses to keep up with, and not saying that somethings, like home-ownership, aren't challenges for hard-working middle-classers, but if the middle class is crunching down on me, I would consider laying off on the home entertainment system, raffling off the Eddie Buaer Edition Hummer, and trying to make a vacation to the local museum suffice. In effect that is what I have done in Panama (lived off beans and rice, reseigned to taking the bus and walking instead of taking a taxi, not buying the $150 Kenneth Cole Shoes that I wanted, and other simple things that have added up to the more than 50% of my paycheck that I now save in preparation for financial shipwreck when I go to the states), and maybe that is why my definition of Middle class may not be so American. Some would say that to take away the idea of Consumerism would be to take away the essence of the middle class itself, but I would say that middle classes in other countries exist without the rat-pack-y-ness greed of American consumption. While in America, middle class mobility is often gained and portrayed through exorbant consumerism, foreing middle class is not underpinned, obtained, or demonstration by or through this idea of consumption.

So, who knows what will happen when I move back to the state. But all this theorizing. I am planning to be back in the states as a grad student (keep your fingers crossed on this one), so aruging about the middle class is probably just moot. As a grad student, I am sure I will be shackled in the depths of self-inflicted poverty.

Keep struggling...